POSTAL WORKERS CLEARED, REHIRED AFTER CONTEST FLAP

Three postal clerks who were fired in July for collecting discarded contest catalogs have been reinstated with full back pay following an arbitrator's decision that laid fault with post office management and the radio station that conducted the contest.

The arbitrator, James J. Sherman, in his decision raised questions about the integrity of the contest. He also said the U.S. Postal Service did not handle the mailing properly. He said supervisors were aware employees were gathering the catalogs.

"The evidence suggests that the supervisors in the accounting department were aware of the (employees) activities," Sherman wrote. He said the West Palm Beach Post Office should have taken steps to safeguard the catalogs.

West Palm Beach Postmaster Dennis Burbank did not return a phone call made to his office Tuesday.

Five postal employees, including one mail carrier, were suspended with pay on June 7 -- and subsequently fired -- after three of the employees and a relative of another won thousands of dollars in prizes in the Incredible Catalogue contest sponsored by radio station WRMF-FM in West Palm Beach. Postal inspectors said the employees admitted hoarding undeliverable catalogs.

The names of the employees have not been released. The three clerks returned to work at the post office on Clematis Avenue soon after the Feb. 14 decision, Sherman said.

The other two postal workers implicated in this incident did not go through arbitration, Sherman said. One agreed to a 60-day suspension without pay and the other, a mail carrier, agreed to resign with a clean personnel record, he said.

Lisa Albu, president of Local 749 of the American Postal Workers Union, hailed the decision.

"It just proves that they weren't pilfering. In the public's eye, they were all thieves," she said.

The radio station notified authorities in June because it thought it was unusual that four of the more than 20 winners had some relationship to the post office.

However, Sherman, while not endorsing the actions of the postal workers, placed blame with the post office management and the radio station. He said WRMF should have had undelivered catalogs either returned to the station or given specific instructions to the post office about disposing of them.

Sherman also suggested there may have been some impropriety. He said a disproportionate number of the 359,000 catalogs with winning numbers were undeliverable. But he stopped short of saying the contest was fixed to reduce the number of winners.

"Of course, the arbitrator does not know whether the contest was rigged, as the statistics suggest, or whether it was perfectly legitimate," he said.

George Mills, vice president and general manager of WRMF, said Sherman's conlusions are unfair and wrong.

He said in any direct mailing, 10 to 20 percent of the letters are undeliverable because of inadvertent error and because people have moved. He said it is not the consumers responsibility but that of the post office to safeguard discarded mailings.